The Biden Crises

Floor Speech

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Mr. GUTHRIE. Madam Speaker, I thank my friend from Louisiana for yielding.

Madam Speaker, I rise today to address the rising number of drug overdoses. It is one of our greatest public health threats, and illicit fentanyl is the main driver.

The class-wide ban of fentanyl analogs expires February 18, and if Congress does not act to extend the ban on fentanyl analogs, many of these illicit drugs would essentially become street legal.

For context, fentanyl analogs have been found to be four to five times more potent than fentanyl, and fentanyl is 50 times stronger than heroin.

In Kentucky, fentanyl was responsible for over 70 percent of all drug overdoses in 2020, and even tragically, took the life of a 2-year-old who ingested opioids laced with fentanyl that he found in his mom's purse.

More recently, a 13-year-old overdosed from fentanyl in Connecticut, and authorities recovered around 1,000 bags of fentanyl in his bedroom.

The purpose of permanently scheduling in a class-wide ban is to save lives by reducing a criminal's incentive to develop new variations of fentanyl analogs to try to evade law enforcement. And we have seen fewer new fentanyl analog encounters during this ban.

I am working to permanently schedule fentanyl analogs by passing the HALT Fentanyl Act. And I am disappointed that today the Democrats blocked consideration of the HALT Fentanyl Act.

Now is not the time to scale back our fight against these deadly drugs. We need to permanently schedule fentanyl analogs and secure our southern border to stop these poisons from reaching our communities, or else thousands more American lives will be at stake.

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